Paid Content

How Flixel Lets Anyone Make Beautiful Cinemagraphs

Take a picture of a beautiful woman — a dreamy piece of photographic art that, even in stillness, has an aesthetic that even the most creative individuals aspire to mimic. Then, in what most people can only describe as, "Just like in the Harry Potter movies," the woman's eyes blink, her wistful smirk tips into a small smile or perhaps her hair is blown in perpetuity.

The mysteriously beautiful qualities of the cinemagraph are hard to ignore. Pioneered by fashion photography duo Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg, cinemagraphs transform the GIF medium into a piece of art that design lovers swoon over. And its creative purposes are nearly endless — half of the beauty of a cinemagraph is the employment of clever animation.

But what about the laypeople? The demand and desire for creative photography platforms is evident, especially given the success of still photography app Instagram, so how do you translate such a technical piece of art into a simple, shareable app that captures people's attentions? The response is Flixel, an iPhone app dedicated to not only replicating but also simplifying the magical qualities of Beck and Burg's photography.

"The process is simple: capture a two-second scene, then with a few finger swipes paint the area you'd like to animate," explains Mark Homza, co-founder and CMO of Flixel. "The rest of the image stays still, while the motion repeats."

Mashable spoke with Homza about what attracts people to the beauty of cinemagraphs and the company's near-promise that users of Flixel — dubbed "flixographers" — could find creativity in the app's simplicity.

Q&A with Mark Homza, Co-Founder and CMO of Flixel

Why cinemagraphs?

For a couple months, we were brainstorming all sorts of ideas. We wanted to get into the apps space, and we were thinking, "Fashion app, wellness app..." We were running through the whole gamut of what kind of opportunities would be fun. And then one day, completely by accident, our CEO just stumbled upon the works of Kevin Burg and Jaime Beck. That's where we had this sort of a-ha moment, like, "Wait, this is really cool. What is this? Is this a new art? This is brilliant!" The immediate reaction was, "Is there an app for it? Can we do this with an iPhone or any other mobile device?" We obviously did our research and didn't find anything, so we were like, "Okay, let's build an app for this. Let's try and translate this truly new and original perspective."

Beck and Burg have legitimized the artistic integrity of the animated GIF. As a result, their cinemagraphs embody more of a living photo aesthetic rather than a "video feel". It's an important distinction that we wanted preserved and emulated via Flixel — embracing the GIF format, and in the process, aspiring to be the Beck and Burg of mobile flixography — "the Polaroid of Cinemagraphs".

What's the UI inspiration for Flixel?

I think first and foremost, we wanted to capture Beck and Burg's artistic integrity. There's a certain style, a certain refinement about cinemagraphs. They contrast between stillness and motion in a very subtle way, so we in a sense wanted to provide a tool that captures that same subtlety. We believe great cinemagraphs and great flixels are at their best with that subtle, repeatable motion that emphasizes a particular area of the photograph or tells a story within a story. We wanted our users to be able to replicate if they so chose.

The UI, which was designed by Bretton MacLean, was created and presented in a way where you can be detailed. For example, with our live-painting feature, you can zoom in and paint to get that instant gratification — you can get that detail in a way that's intuitive, fun and seamless. On the other hand, that's sort of your idea going into it, you still have to see how the market reacts and how people are using it.

The UI designer's focus was on two things. Functionality was the first goal — we wanted to turn a complex process into something that was going to be easy, fun and intuitive. Our second goal was to encourage discovery — we wanted to give people different ways to find each other's work. We were really keen on encouraging participation and sharing. From a visual standpoint, when you're talking about Beck and Burg, what we were inspired by was their website. What we took away from that was cleanliness, classiness and to be distinctive. Even from a branding perspective, it was about creating something with its own distinctive and unique identity.

That's why we did purple. From the get-go, it was a very fitting accent color. We talk about how cinemagraphs are hybrids between video and photography, and purple is the hybrid between red and blue. I find it's a nice emulation of that.

What are the challenges of creating a UI that's intuitive enough for novices but has creative options for experienced "flixographers"?

One of our biggest breakthroughs from the get-go was live-painting animation on a still photo. Our earlier prototypes incurred a bit of a speed bump because you would first see your still photograph, then apply a mask on top of it, then go to a second and third step before you saw your final results. We felt there was a huge lag in the creation flow, and I think it took a lot of fun out of the creative process. When you talk about creating a UI that's intuitive — easy, but one that can give certain tools to the more advanced user — we felt the best way to do this would be to re-explore and nail our creative process. That came together with the live-painting animation. We were able to provide people the instant gratification of a live-painted animation — it was a major benefit. When you make something simple and make something good, the more advanced flixographer will use these tools to do something fantastic. And the novice knows how to get it right away, like, "Wow, I can paint this and the picture starts moving. Where can I take this?" And it starts an exploratory journey to see where it goes. The tools are simple.

Once we were happy about that core functionality, it was then about tools that can be better utilized by someone with a more seasoned cinemagraph experience. That's where we integrated looping controls, because you want to be able to repeat or auto-reverse. And obviously we needed to put in filters, because as we all know, it's a post-Instagram world; everybody is expecting cool, hipster-like filters. And the third option we integrated was the ability to trim the start and ending frames of the shot. The trim feature gives flixographers with a little more experience a lot more control — that's what's going to anchor your stability in the shot and give you that tight flixel. That's more for our pro flixographers to create those seamless animations.

Flixel excels at providing filters, both basic and premium, to keep creativity high. How did you come up with them?

We wanted to create our own custom filter designs — no pre-template or anything. They were developed by Jean-François Poliquin and myself, and we were really looking at what was around in this post-Instagram era. From a development perspective, we were looking at increasing the processing speed and making the application filter much quicker. In terms of mood, we were kind of inspired by what we were seeing in elements from Instagram and other applications — we wanted to create our custom-designed offerings.

I think one of the first filters we really worked on that had something innovative to it and a fresh perspective that was also very in line with our goals was the "Flixelate" filter. I'd like to emphasize that that is also my favorite filter! The reason for it is very simple: I think flixels are all about contrast and playing with that contrast in a way where you can create beautiful works of art or completely silly, nonsensical shots as well. With this particular filter, again, you have the contrast of motion and stillness, but you also have the contrast between black and white. So, the whole thing sort of ties together. It's very cool because whatever you animate retains its original color, and the rest is in black and white. Or, you can flip that and do all sorts of creative things with it. From a mood perspective and from a contrast perspective, it really tied in with the contrast and was such a fitting filter when we came up with it. It's one of our most popular premium filters.

Where do you see Flixel's design and UI going now as it evolves?

There are a lot of things I want to do, and there are a lot of things I can't tell you. But, one thing that we've been public about from the get-go is that we really truly listen to our community, which is growing very steadily. We're really keeping our ear to the ground and listening to the feedback provided by some of our core users and people who are just starting out. We're really looking at refining and improving the core experience, for sure. I'm obsessed with simplicity, because I think a big mistake that a lot of businesses (especially in the app world) is that they dream up a bunch of cool features, they get lost in feature land, and then instead of doing one or two things fantastically well, they just throw in a bunch of features. The user ends up getting lost, and it's overwhelming. We want to be true to ourselves — our core contribution to the creation of living photos is making them fun, engaging, easy, simple and intuitive. We want to keep building upon that platform.

We are looking at a possible pro version of the app, and there might be some more advanced features through that. For example, we want to customize for an iPad version, and we're also looking at the Android market as well.

But at the end of the day, it is all about listening to our community and pushing forward.

Mashable
is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.